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Keeping up with the NABERS - August 2016

Energy efficiency has a profound effect on the operational costs and valuation of commercial buildings, so much so that no one in the Building Services arena can ignore its importance. To some extent NABERS has played a critical role, and with changes to Commercial Building Disclosure (CBD) legislation coming into effect soon, a marketable NABERS rating will be even more important.

The CIBSE NSW August Seminar, discussed the upcoming changes to the NABERS Energy rules, their impacts on building ratings and how best to advise clients around accommodating these changes. Dr Paul Bannister discussed these changes and the reasoning behind them, he also discussed the changes to AS/NZS 3598 and the move to an alternate way of auditing a building’s performance. He then went on to discuss how NABERS is viewed overseas.

Dr Bannister was joined by Ian Van Eerden, CIBSE YEN Chair and Senior Sustainability Engineer at Northrop, who discussed how the UK is adapting their buildings to incorporate performance benchmarking around the NABERS program and the value placed on this to close the “performance gap” between modelling and performance.

The technical session provided a detailed overview of the changes to the NABERS rules and AS/NZS 3598 and discussed how Australia’s building industry compares favourably to the UK’s, despite less onerous energy efficiency requirements within our building codes.

The seminar was held at the Northrop Consulting Engineers office on level 11, 345 George Street. Our sincere thanks to Northrop for their kind support.